Season of Migration to the North

by Tayeb Sali

  There is no justice or moderation in the world. I feel bitterness and hatred, for after all those victims he crowned his life with yet another one, Hosna Bint Mahmoud, the only woman I have ever loved. She killed poor Wad Rayyes and killed herself because of Mustafa Sa’eed. I picked up a photograph in a leather frame. This was clearly Ann Hammond, despite the fact she was wearing an Arab robe and head-dress. The dedication under the picture was in shaky Arabic writing: ‘From your slave girl, Sausan.’ It was a lively face exuding such exuberant good health that the picture could hardly contain it. There was a dimple in each cheek and the lips were full and relaxed; the eyes glowed with curiosity. All this was apparent in the picture despite the years that must have passed since it was taken. ‘Unlike me, she yearned for tropical climes, cruel suns, purple horizons. In her eyes I was a symbol of all these hankerings of hers. I am South that yearns for the North and the ice. She owned a flat in Hampstead overlooking the Heath which she would go to from Oxford at week-ends. We would spend Saturday night at my place and Sunday night at hers — and sometimes she would stay on over Monday sometimes for the whole week. Then she began absenting herself from the University for a month at a time, then two, until she was sent down. She used to bury her face under my armpit and breathe me into herself as though inhaling some narcotic smoke. Her face would be puckered with pleasure. “I love your sweat," she would say as though intoning rites in a temple. "I want to have the smell of you in full — the smell of rotting leaves in the jungles of Africa, the smell of the mango and the pawpaw and tropical spices, the smell of rains in the deserts of Arabia.” She was an easy prey. I had met her following a lecture I gave in Oxford on Abu Nuwas. I told them that Omar Khayyam was nothing in comparison with Abu Nuwas. I read them some of his poetry about wine in a comic oratorical style which I claimed was how Arabic poetry used to be recited in the Abbasid era. In the lecture I said that Abu Nuwas was a Sufi mystic and that he had made of wine a symbol with which to express all his spiritual yearnings, that the longing for wine in his poetry was really a longing for self-obliteration in the Divine — all arrant nonsense with no basis of fact. However, I was inspired that evening and found the lies tripping off my tongue like sublime truths. Feeling that my elation was communicating itself to my audience, I lied more and more extravagantly After the lecture they all crowded round me, retired civil servants who had worked in the East, old women whose husbands had died in Egypt, Iraq and the Sudan, men who had fought with Kitchener and Allenby, orientalists, and officials in the Colonial Office and the Middle East section of the Foreign Office. Suddenly I saw a girl of eighteen or nineteen rushing towards me through the ranks of people. She put her arms around me and kissed me. "You are beautiful beyond description,” she said, speaking in Arabic, “and the love I have for you is beyond description.” With an emotion the violence of which frightened me, I said: “At last I have found you, Sausan. I searched everywhere for you and was afraid I would never find you. Do you remember?” “How can I forget our house in Karkh in Baghdad on the banks of the river Tigris in the days of El-Ma’ moun,” she said with an emotion no less intense than mine. “I too have followed your footsteps across the centuries, but I was certain we would find each other — and here you are, my darling Mustafa, unchanged since we parted.” It was as if she and I were on a stage surrounded by actors who were performing minor roles. I was the hero and she the heroine. The lights went down, darkness reigned all round us, and she and I remained alone in the middle of the stage with a single light trained upon us. Though I realized I was lying, I felt that somehow I meant what I was saying and that she too, despite her lying, was telling the truth. It was one of those rare moments of ecstasy for which I would sell my whole life; a moment in which, before your very eyes, lies are turned into truths, history becomes a pimp, and the jester is turned into a sultan. Still in the exuberance of that dream, she took me to London in her car. She drove with terrifying speed and from time to time would let go of the driving wheel and put her arms round me. “How happy I am to have found you at last!" she shouted. “I’m so happy I wouldn’t care if I died this very instant." We stopped at pubs on the way; sometimes drinking cider, sometimes beer, red wine, white wine, and sometimes we drank whisky, and with every glass I would quote to her from the poetry of Abu Nuwas. I quoted:

  “Does it not please you the earth is awaking,

  That old virgin wine is there for the taking?

  Let’s have no excuse, come enjoy this delight;

  Its mother is green, its sire black as night.

  Make haste, Karkh’s gardens hang heavy with bloom,

  Safe and unscathed from War’s blighting doom.”

  ‘I also quoted to her the lines:

  “Full many a glass clear as the lamp of Heaven did I drink

  Over a kiss or in promise of a tryst we’d keep;

  So matured it was by time that you would think

  Beams of light out of the sky did seep.”

  ‘Then I quoted:

  “When the man of war his knights for war deploys

  And Deaths banner calls alike to grey-beards and to boys,

  When fires of destruction rage and battle starts,

  We, using our hands as bows with lilies as our darts,

  Turn war to revelry and still the best of friends we stay.

  When on their drums they beat, we on our lutes do play

  To young men who death in pleasure count a sacrifice divine,

  While fair cup-bearer, subject of our strife, restores to us the plundered wine,

  So insistent he, scarce a glass goes empty than it’s filled again.

  Here a man reels drunkenly, there another by excess is slain.

  This is true war, not a war that between man and man brings strife;

  In it with wine we kill and our dead with wine we bring to life.”

  And so it was with us: she, moved by poetry and drink, feeding me with sweet lies, while I wove for her intricate and terrifying threads of fantasy. She would tell me that in my eyes she saw the shimmer of mirages in hot deserts, that in my voice she heard the screams of ferocious beasts in the jungles. And I would tell her that in the blueness of her eyes I saw the faraway shoreless seas of the North. In London I took her to my house, the den of lethal lies that I had deliberately built up, lie upon lie: the sandalwood and incense; the ostrich feathers and ivory and ebony figurines; the paintings and drawings of forests of palm trees along the shores of the Nile, boats with sails like doves’ wings, suns setting over the mountains of the Red Sea, camel caravans wending their way along sand dunes on the borders of the Yemen, baobab trees in Kordofan, naked girls from the tribes of the Zandi, the Nuer and the Shuluk, fields of banana and coffee on the Equator, old temples in the district of Nubia; Arabic books with decorated covers written in ornate Kufic script; Persian carpets, pink curtains, large mirrors on the walls, and coloured lights in the corners. She knelt and kissed my feet. “You are Mustafa, my master and my lord,” she said, "and I am Sausan, your slave girl.” And so, in silence, each one of us chose his role, she to act the part of the slave girl and I that of the master. She prepared the bath, then washed me with water in which she had poured essence of roses. She lit the joss-sticks and the sandalwood in the Maghrabi brass brazier hanging in the entrance. She put on an aba and head-dress, while I stretched out on the bed and she massaged my chest, legs, neck and shoulders. “Come here,” I said to her imperiously “To hear is to obey O master!” she answered me in a subdued voice. While still in the throes of fantasy, intoxication and madness, I took her and she accepted, for what happened had already happened between us a thousand years ago. They found her dead in her flat in Hampstead, having gassed herself: they also found a note saying: “Mr Sa’eed, God damn you!”

  I put back Ann Hammond’s picture in its place to the left of the photograph of Mustafa Sa’eed standing between Mrs Robinson and her husband, on which the dedication at the bottom read, ‘To dear Moozie — Cairo 17/4/ 1913’. It s
eems that she used to use ‘Moozie’ as a pet name, for in her letter she also refers to him by it. Mustafa Sa’eed, though frowning, looks a mere child in the picture. Mrs Robinson stands to his left, her arm round his shoulders, while her husband’s arm embraces the two of them, and both he and his wife are smiling naturally and happily; their faces are those of young people who have not yet reached their thirties. Despite everything, Mrs Robinson’s love for him did not waver. She attended the trial from beginning to end and heard every word, yet in her letter to me she said:

  ‘I cannot express the extent of my gratitude to you for having written to me about dear Moozie. Moozie was, for my husband and me, the dearest of people. Poor Moozie. He was a tortured child, yet he brought boundless happiness to the hearts of my husband and me. After that painful business and his leaving London, I lost touch with him, and though I made every effort to re-establish contact I failed, Poor Moozie. What slightly lightens the pain of losing him is the knowledge that he spent the last years of his life happily amongst you and that he married a good wife and had two sons. Please give my love to Mrs Sa’eed. Let her think of me as a mother and if there’s anything I can do for her and her two dear children, tell her not to hesitate to write to me. How happy I’d be if they all came and spent the next summer holidays with me. I am living here alone in the Isle of Wight. Last January I traveled to Cairo and visited my husband’s grave. Ricky had a great love for Cairo and fate decreed that he should be buried in the city he loved more than any other in the world.

  ‘I am keeping myself busy writing a book about our life — about Ricky, Moozie and me. They were both great men, each in his own way. Ricky's greatness lay in his ability to bring happiness to others. He was somebody who was happy in the real sense of the word; he exuded happiness to everyone he came into contact with. Moozie had the mind of a genius, but he was unstable; he was incapable of either accepting or giving happiness other than to those he really loved and was loved by like Ricky and me. I feel that love and duty require me to tell people the story of those two great men. The book will actually be about Ricky and Moozie because I did nothing of note. I shall write of the splendid services Ricky rendered to Arabic culture, such as his discovery of so many rare manuscripts, the commentaries he wrote on them, and the way he supervised the printing of them. I shall write about the great part played by Moozie in drawing attention here to the misery in which his countrymen live under our colonial mandate, and I shall write in detail about the trial and shall clear his name of all suspicion. I shall be grateful if you’d send me anything left behind by Moozie which would be of assistance to me in writing this book. Perhaps Moozie told you he’d made me trustee of his affairs in London. A certain amount of money has accumulated from royalties from some of his books and from translation rights on others, which I shall forward on directly you let me have the address of the bank to which you want me to transfer it. In this connection let me thank you very much for accepting to look after dear Moozie’s family. Please write to me regularly and tell me their news, also send me a photo of them in your next letter.

  Yours sincerely,

  Elizabeth.’

  I placed the letter in my pocket and seated myself in the chair to the right of the fireplace. My glance fell on an issue of The Umar dated Monday 26 September 1927. Births, Marriages, Deaths. The marriage was conducted by the Rev Canon Sampson M.A. Funeral service at Stuntney Church, 2 o’clock Wednesday. The Personal Column: Ever beloved. Will it be much longer? ‘Dear Heart.’ Kenya Colony – Mr … Chartered Surveyor returns to Nairobi October 5th. Until then communications regarding reports on properties in the Colony should be addressed to him care of. Advertisement for riding lessons. Blue Persian cats for sale. Girl (17), refined, of gentle birth, seeks opening. Lady by birth (30) desires post abroad. Sports news: West Hill beat Burhill. West Ham Win. The Victory of Gene Tunney. A letter from Zafrullah Khan in which he refutes the views of Sir Chimanlal Setalvad about the dispute between the Moslems and the Hindus in the Punjab. A letter saying that jazz is a cheerful music in a sunless world. Two elephants from Rangoon arrived at the Zoo yesterday having walked from Tilbury Docks. Cattle breeder was attacked by a bull on his farm and gored to death. A man who stole four bananas was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude. Imperial and Foreign News. The New offer from Moscow to settle the Russian debt to France. Floods in Switzerland. The Discovery, Captain Scott’s ship, has returned from the Southern Seas. Herr Stresemann gave a speech on disarmament in Geneva on Saturday. Herr Stresemann also made a statement to the ‘Matin’ paper in which he supported President Von Hindenburg’s speech at Tannenberg in which he denied that Germany was responsible for the outbreak of the war. The leading article was about the Treaty of Jeddah which was signed by Sir Gilbert Clayton on behalf of Great Britain and Prince Feisal Abdul-Aziz Al Saud on behalf of his father, the King of the Hejaz and of Nejd and its dependencies. Weather Forecast for England and Wales: Winds mainly between W and N .W, strong at times in exposed places; considerable fair intervals, but a few thundery showers and perhaps occasional local rains.

  It appeared to be the only newspaper. Was there any significance in its presence here or was it here by mere chance?

  Opening a notebook, I read on the first page: ‘My Life Story — by Mustafa Sa’eed.’ On the next page was the dedication: ‘To those who see with one eye, speak with one tongue and see things as either black or white, either Eastern or Western.’ I flicked through the rest of the pages but found nothing — not a single sentence, not a single word. Did this too have some significance or was it mere chance? I opened a file and found numerous papers, sketches and drawings. He was, it seems, trying his hand at writing and drawing. The drawings were good and revealed real talent. Coloured drawings of English country scenes in which oak trees, rivers and swans were repeated; pencil sketches of scenes and people from our village. Despite everything I cannot but admit his great skill. Bakri, Mahjoub, my grandfather, Wad Rayyes, Hosna, my uncle Abdul Karim, and others: their faces looked out at me with the penetrating expressions I had long been aware of but which I had been incapable of defining. Mustafa Sa’eed had drawn them with a clarity of vision and sympathy that approached love. Wad Rayyes’s face was more in evidence than the others — eight drawings of him in different poses. Why was he so interested in Wad Rayyes?

  I looked at some scraps of paper and read, ‘We teach people in order to open up their minds and release their captive powers. But we cannot predict the result. Freedom — we free their minds from superstition. We give the people the keys of the future to act therein as they wish.’ ‘I left London with Europe having begun to mobilize her armies once again for even more ferocious violence.’ ‘It was not hatred. It was a love unable to express itself. I loved her in a twisted manner. She too.’ ‘The roofs of the houses are all wettened by the drizzle. The cows and sheep in the fields are like white and black pebbles. The light rain of June. Allow me, Madam. These train journeys are boring. How do you do? From Birmingham. To London. How do you describe the scenery? Trees and grass. Haystacks in the middle of the fields. The trees and the grass are the same everywhere. A book by Ngaio Marsh. She hesitated. She didn’t say yes or no.’ Was he describing real events or plotting out a story? ‘My lord, I must object to the prosecution’s resorting to a clear dialectical trick in that he wants to establish the accused’s responsibility for events for which he was not responsible, basing his argument upon something that did in fact happen; he then confirms his assumption of what happened on the basis of his previous assumptions. The accused admits he killed his wife, but this does not make him responsible for all the incidents of suicide by women in the British Isles during the past ten years.’ ‘He who breeds good, for him are hatched young birds that fly with happiness. He who breeds evil, for him there grows a tree whose thorns are sorrow and whose fruit is regret. May God have mercy on someone who has turned a blind eye to error and has indulged in the outward aspect of things.’

  I found as
well a poem in his handwriting. It seems he was also dabbling in poetry; and it was clear from all the crossings—out and changes that he too was somewhat awed when face to face with art. Here it is: